*
http://the-doosra.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/saeed-ajmal-banned-by-scyld-berry-in.html
Very unfortunate, however, that the occasion should be the banning of Saeed Ajmal - who is my favourite bowler currently active in world cricket
http://the-doosra.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=ajmal
*
Wednesday 10 September 2014
What should single men *do*?
*
Some ideas, or notions - from a perspective which sees current arrangements as extremely bad and contributing to vast misery and despair.
I am implicitly referring to able-bodied men in decent health, who can work and make a living.
*
Given that it is generally much better to be married and to have children; what about those men (and it would mostly be men) who do not marry, do not have children - and whose lives are therefore celibate (as the ideal)?
1. Do not live alone. People are not meant to live alone: it is bad for them.
If you have one and if possible, continue to live with your family. If you don't or can't, then live communally in some kind of structured environment (like a college, boarding school, the military or other community). Or with a group of friends or similarly-placed men. At least have meals together.
But if no such thing exists, as is usually the case, the prospects are indeed bleak. Finding some such environment should be a life-priority.
2. Work is not enough. Work and leisure is not enough.
You must be religious, and live a life of service in a (real) church if you are not to go off the rails psychologically and spiritually - one way or the other.
3. If possible and appropriate, befriend and become attached to some family or families that you can help in whatever ways they need, and where you can become 'part of the family' to some extent.
The life of a 'live in' servant of some type may be suitable (caretaker, gardener etc) as long as it is not solitary.
4. If you are a Christian with a 'monastic' tradition of the religious life, consider living in a religious community, and serving that community in whatever capacity they need - perhaps as a 'lay brother'.
The above list is far from exhaustive - but the problem for single men is, and doubtless always will be, a real one - and, psychologically, a big one.
*
Note added: I think the point I most would emphasize is that the single man must not make work his priority, and fit everything else around it. Nor should he live for his leisure: for weekends and holidays. Neither of those will be effective, and either may prevent him finding what he really needs. The strategic priorities, that towards which he plans and schemes, should be along the lines described above. For example, he might seek a job in a place where there is a good church, or to stay with his family.
Some ideas, or notions - from a perspective which sees current arrangements as extremely bad and contributing to vast misery and despair.
I am implicitly referring to able-bodied men in decent health, who can work and make a living.
*
Given that it is generally much better to be married and to have children; what about those men (and it would mostly be men) who do not marry, do not have children - and whose lives are therefore celibate (as the ideal)?
1. Do not live alone. People are not meant to live alone: it is bad for them.
If you have one and if possible, continue to live with your family. If you don't or can't, then live communally in some kind of structured environment (like a college, boarding school, the military or other community). Or with a group of friends or similarly-placed men. At least have meals together.
But if no such thing exists, as is usually the case, the prospects are indeed bleak. Finding some such environment should be a life-priority.
2. Work is not enough. Work and leisure is not enough.
You must be religious, and live a life of service in a (real) church if you are not to go off the rails psychologically and spiritually - one way or the other.
3. If possible and appropriate, befriend and become attached to some family or families that you can help in whatever ways they need, and where you can become 'part of the family' to some extent.
The life of a 'live in' servant of some type may be suitable (caretaker, gardener etc) as long as it is not solitary.
4. If you are a Christian with a 'monastic' tradition of the religious life, consider living in a religious community, and serving that community in whatever capacity they need - perhaps as a 'lay brother'.
The above list is far from exhaustive - but the problem for single men is, and doubtless always will be, a real one - and, psychologically, a big one.
*
Note added: I think the point I most would emphasize is that the single man must not make work his priority, and fit everything else around it. Nor should he live for his leisure: for weekends and holidays. Neither of those will be effective, and either may prevent him finding what he really needs. The strategic priorities, that towards which he plans and schemes, should be along the lines described above. For example, he might seek a job in a place where there is a good church, or to stay with his family.
Tuesday 9 September 2014
Advocacy of sin is the worst evil: worse than actually sinning - some implications
*
Which is why the mass media is by far the most evil entity which has ever existed.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-evil-of-mass-media-greatest-evil-of.html
It is generally not understood, even by Christians, that it is standard Christian doctrine that advocating sin is far worse than actually sinning. The reason is that sinning (to some significant extent) is unavoidable and a part of the human condition, while advocating sin is deliberate.
So the primary virtue is to advocate virtue; the worst sin is to advocate sin.
*
Actually being virtuous is certainly a good thing, the best thing - but is not always possible to everybody - for reasons of character and circumstance, weakness and ignorance.
Intellectuals preen themselves on their virtuousness because they refrain from violence and theft - yet theologically speaking modern intellectuals are - as a class - practitioners of deliberate evil on an vast scale in their systematic destruction of truth, beauty and virtue.
And, of course, the biggest and worst evil of the class of intellectuals is to advocate evil by inversion of the good: to claim ugliness is beauty (eg. mainstream modern art, design and architecture), to enforce wickedness as a higher virtue (eg. the sexual revolution as positively-depicted in a million novels, movies and TV shows and a billion news items), and to enforce distortion and suppression as the essential truth (e.g. the narrowing and ever-more-aggressively false doctrines of political correctness).
*
The corruption runs deep, yet not so deep that intellectuals have utterly lost subliminal awareness of what they are doing. This combination accounts for the prevalent misery, angst and anger of the dominant classes having a different quality from that of the past - a undertow of self-hatred and suicidal despair.
Despair is the key concept: the absence of real hope: hope of good that is real, objective, permanent.
(The creed of the modern intellectual is that no good thing is real, objective and permanent.)
The creed of the modern intellectual is implied-despair. Not the direct preaching of despair as a principle - but rather preaching of a set of non-beliefs that must lead to despair - because there is nowhere else for them to lead...
*
There is then - understandably - a craving for escape... but an escape merely into distractions that are pre-acknowledged to be unsatisfactory and unsatisfying because they are regarded as untrue.
(We are allowed to escape, sometimes, but only if we regard the escaped-to word as untrue. An imagined world must be acknowledged as fundamentally imaginary.)
Having demolished (to their own satisfaction) the objective validity of God; the intellectual elites have recently demolished (to their own satisfaction) the objective good of marriage and family - and they are left only with a life based-on 'work and leisure'...
Work and leisure are all that remains. There is nothing else.
Yet work has long since been exposed as a fraud and demolished (to the satisfaction of elites) by Marxism/ Socialism/ Liberalism/ Leftism...
So leisure is now the whole thing - a life aspiring to leisure, and yet leisure pre-acknowledged merely as a pastime - something to pass-the-time... a search for distracting novelties.
Sexual novelty, travel to new places, buying new stuff, doing new things... that is IT: the whole thing. That is the highest conceivable aspiration of the modern intellectual elites and the world they propagate 24/7 via the mass media, the world to which we are addicted, the world to which we are electronically plugged-in: a world which is, in its primary operations, built-upon the deliberate advocacy of sin: that is, the deliberate destruction of good.
*
http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk/
Which is why the mass media is by far the most evil entity which has ever existed.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-evil-of-mass-media-greatest-evil-of.html
It is generally not understood, even by Christians, that it is standard Christian doctrine that advocating sin is far worse than actually sinning. The reason is that sinning (to some significant extent) is unavoidable and a part of the human condition, while advocating sin is deliberate.
So the primary virtue is to advocate virtue; the worst sin is to advocate sin.
*
Actually being virtuous is certainly a good thing, the best thing - but is not always possible to everybody - for reasons of character and circumstance, weakness and ignorance.
Intellectuals preen themselves on their virtuousness because they refrain from violence and theft - yet theologically speaking modern intellectuals are - as a class - practitioners of deliberate evil on an vast scale in their systematic destruction of truth, beauty and virtue.
And, of course, the biggest and worst evil of the class of intellectuals is to advocate evil by inversion of the good: to claim ugliness is beauty (eg. mainstream modern art, design and architecture), to enforce wickedness as a higher virtue (eg. the sexual revolution as positively-depicted in a million novels, movies and TV shows and a billion news items), and to enforce distortion and suppression as the essential truth (e.g. the narrowing and ever-more-aggressively false doctrines of political correctness).
*
The corruption runs deep, yet not so deep that intellectuals have utterly lost subliminal awareness of what they are doing. This combination accounts for the prevalent misery, angst and anger of the dominant classes having a different quality from that of the past - a undertow of self-hatred and suicidal despair.
Despair is the key concept: the absence of real hope: hope of good that is real, objective, permanent.
(The creed of the modern intellectual is that no good thing is real, objective and permanent.)
The creed of the modern intellectual is implied-despair. Not the direct preaching of despair as a principle - but rather preaching of a set of non-beliefs that must lead to despair - because there is nowhere else for them to lead...
*
There is then - understandably - a craving for escape... but an escape merely into distractions that are pre-acknowledged to be unsatisfactory and unsatisfying because they are regarded as untrue.
(We are allowed to escape, sometimes, but only if we regard the escaped-to word as untrue. An imagined world must be acknowledged as fundamentally imaginary.)
Having demolished (to their own satisfaction) the objective validity of God; the intellectual elites have recently demolished (to their own satisfaction) the objective good of marriage and family - and they are left only with a life based-on 'work and leisure'...
Work and leisure are all that remains. There is nothing else.
Yet work has long since been exposed as a fraud and demolished (to the satisfaction of elites) by Marxism/ Socialism/ Liberalism/ Leftism...
So leisure is now the whole thing - a life aspiring to leisure, and yet leisure pre-acknowledged merely as a pastime - something to pass-the-time... a search for distracting novelties.
Sexual novelty, travel to new places, buying new stuff, doing new things... that is IT: the whole thing. That is the highest conceivable aspiration of the modern intellectual elites and the world they propagate 24/7 via the mass media, the world to which we are addicted, the world to which we are electronically plugged-in: a world which is, in its primary operations, built-upon the deliberate advocacy of sin: that is, the deliberate destruction of good.
*
http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk/
An "Outward Bound" course on the Moray Firth and the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland - summer of 1976
*
I had a grim time overall, much like military basic training - but the 1976 summer was the hottest and driest on record, and the photos are quite interesting.
http://baronofjesmond.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/outward-bound-burghead-scotland-summer.html
*
I had a grim time overall, much like military basic training - but the 1976 summer was the hottest and driest on record, and the photos are quite interesting.
http://baronofjesmond.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/outward-bound-burghead-scotland-summer.html
*
Monday 8 September 2014
Brief Review of Watership Down by Richard Adams (1972)
*
I have just re-reread this after a gap of six years, and can confirm that I rate it as one of the best 'children's' fantasy books of all time - to be set alongside Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, Narnia and Harry Potter (my personal pantheon).
Like each of these it is unique, a one-off - and clearly written under some kind of inspiration.
Also, Watership Down has that multi-valent richness and depth of the best books in this genre - including a vivid, convincing and beautiful incorporation of the rabbit's religion and spiritual life (and some of their language!); which is, I think, better-done than in any of the other-mentioned books.
Watership Down has great characters, adventures, love, battles, natural beauty, humour, mystery and high seriousness, and lots about the life of bunnies! - a complete and rounded sub-created world; but to pick these apart and present them separately would be to distort and misrepresent the feel of the book.
Certainly, it is a work of genius.
*
I have just re-reread this after a gap of six years, and can confirm that I rate it as one of the best 'children's' fantasy books of all time - to be set alongside Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, Narnia and Harry Potter (my personal pantheon).
Like each of these it is unique, a one-off - and clearly written under some kind of inspiration.
Also, Watership Down has that multi-valent richness and depth of the best books in this genre - including a vivid, convincing and beautiful incorporation of the rabbit's religion and spiritual life (and some of their language!); which is, I think, better-done than in any of the other-mentioned books.
Watership Down has great characters, adventures, love, battles, natural beauty, humour, mystery and high seriousness, and lots about the life of bunnies! - a complete and rounded sub-created world; but to pick these apart and present them separately would be to distort and misrepresent the feel of the book.
Certainly, it is a work of genius.
*
Sunday 7 September 2014
Four early morning walks in Oxford
*
Note: 'Early' means before 7 am.
I had four early morning walks during my recent family holiday to Oxford. Walking in Oxford can be marvellous - or else made disappointing by dense crowds, the intrusions of sturdy beggars, and the sense of being walled-out-from so many gems.
But if you pick your places and times, and have a pilgrim's purpose - all these problems may be circumvented - and depth and richness of experience will be your reward.
*
1. Christ Church Meadows
I began by walking from Jericho, cutting across to St Giles, down the Broad and past the Radcliffe Camera (as featured in the Notion Club Papers) to the Magdalen end of the Meadows, looping around to the Christ Church end.
The Meadows are one of the loveliest spots in England when you have them to yourself on a summer morning. I men only one other person. There is the natural beauty of the river, and also looking across at the beauty of the old colleges lined-up across the top of the meadows, and reflecting on the fundamental spiritual health of early generations who built them.
I came back to Jericho via the canal from Hythe Bridge, and past numerous (some astonishingly scruffy) houseboats.
*
2. The Parks and St Cross churchyard
The Parks are surrounded by the Science labs and research units of the university, and centred on the cricket grounds. They are very pleasant - especially at the far end where there is a view across the River Cherwell to summer pastures and the possibility of a diversion to really rural countryside.
Alternatively, from another corner of the Parks one can reach Mesopotamia - a narrow strip 'between two rivers' - actually a spit of land dividing the Cherwell. It was a favourite route for the Lewis brothers between the home in Headington Quarry and Magdalen College.
However, this day I went to St Cross Churchyard to visit the grave of Charles Williams (and Hugo Dyson and Kenneth Grahame). It is a gorgeously verdant, overgrown backwater - very quiet at this time of day.
*
3. Port Meadow Willow Walk
This is a very pleasing narrow, streamside walk leading-out onto Port Meadow from Jericho. It goes to an excellent spot beside the River Thames, the rather OTT-named 'Rainbow Bridge' and a great view back across Port Meadow and out towards The Trout at Wolvercote (an Inklings pub).
*
4. The suburbs of North Oxford
This might not have a wide appeal; but I had a wonderfully enjoyable Victorian suburban morning walk that began with visiting Tolkien's two houses in Northmoor Road in its route zig-zagged past broad leafy residential streets, most of the women's colleges, the Dragon School and into The Parks (again) via the Lady Margaret Hall entrance - crossing the dewy grass and ducking under trees next to the cricket square, and by various means to Blackwell’s bookshop.
*
NOTE: The above photos of the places I walked were taken from Google Images - acknowledgement and thanks are due to the gifted photographers who made them.
Note: 'Early' means before 7 am.
I had four early morning walks during my recent family holiday to Oxford. Walking in Oxford can be marvellous - or else made disappointing by dense crowds, the intrusions of sturdy beggars, and the sense of being walled-out-from so many gems.
But if you pick your places and times, and have a pilgrim's purpose - all these problems may be circumvented - and depth and richness of experience will be your reward.
*
1. Christ Church Meadows
I began by walking from Jericho, cutting across to St Giles, down the Broad and past the Radcliffe Camera (as featured in the Notion Club Papers) to the Magdalen end of the Meadows, looping around to the Christ Church end.
The Meadows are one of the loveliest spots in England when you have them to yourself on a summer morning. I men only one other person. There is the natural beauty of the river, and also looking across at the beauty of the old colleges lined-up across the top of the meadows, and reflecting on the fundamental spiritual health of early generations who built them.
I came back to Jericho via the canal from Hythe Bridge, and past numerous (some astonishingly scruffy) houseboats.
*
2. The Parks and St Cross churchyard
The Parks are surrounded by the Science labs and research units of the university, and centred on the cricket grounds. They are very pleasant - especially at the far end where there is a view across the River Cherwell to summer pastures and the possibility of a diversion to really rural countryside.
Alternatively, from another corner of the Parks one can reach Mesopotamia - a narrow strip 'between two rivers' - actually a spit of land dividing the Cherwell. It was a favourite route for the Lewis brothers between the home in Headington Quarry and Magdalen College.
However, this day I went to St Cross Churchyard to visit the grave of Charles Williams (and Hugo Dyson and Kenneth Grahame). It is a gorgeously verdant, overgrown backwater - very quiet at this time of day.
*
3. Port Meadow Willow Walk
This is a very pleasing narrow, streamside walk leading-out onto Port Meadow from Jericho. It goes to an excellent spot beside the River Thames, the rather OTT-named 'Rainbow Bridge' and a great view back across Port Meadow and out towards The Trout at Wolvercote (an Inklings pub).
*
4. The suburbs of North Oxford
This might not have a wide appeal; but I had a wonderfully enjoyable Victorian suburban morning walk that began with visiting Tolkien's two houses in Northmoor Road in its route zig-zagged past broad leafy residential streets, most of the women's colleges, the Dragon School and into The Parks (again) via the Lady Margaret Hall entrance - crossing the dewy grass and ducking under trees next to the cricket square, and by various means to Blackwell’s bookshop.
*
NOTE: The above photos of the places I walked were taken from Google Images - acknowledgement and thanks are due to the gifted photographers who made them.
"...And when I tried to pray I found the line 'dead'" - what to do when disconnected from God (Christians are pagan as well as Christian - therefore we can use pagan remedies)
*
Dairy of Warnie Lewis (C.S. Lewis's brother) for 4 March 1948.
Whether from cold, temper, depression, or all three, I had a shocking night, and when I tried to pray I found the line 'dead'.
This poignant comment comes from a day when Warnie returned to an unwelcoming home from hospital; where he had landed after a severe and prolonged alcoholic binge. The cause of the binge he gives as "the wearisome cycle of insomnia-drugs-depression-spirits-illness".
So there are many possible reasons from religious, through psychological and including physical why Warnie had a shocking night that particular night - but his experience of finding 'the line dead' when he tried to pray (and most needed help) is what jumped out at me; because I suppose all Christians have experienced this to a greater or lesser extent.
*
When the benefits of prayer are most needed, sometimes - and for whatever reason - the 'connection' to God just doesn't seem to work.
What then? Clearly some kind of Plan B is required; and what 'works' (if anything) will depend on the individual.
Anything requiring other people (such as attending liturgy or participating in Mass) is not timely. Reading scripture works for some people, but again may not be possible - indeed, powers of concentration may be too poor.
One neglected possibility may be to dwell upon a very simple (child-like) vision of the nature of existence - that the world around us is alive and that there is a benign personage behind it all.
There may be some such positive and connective vision in the mind - perhaps from memories of childhood or happy times; perhaps from a book or a movie.
*
The idea is that feeling disconnected, alienated and existentially-alone is the worst thing and prevents any better things; and the remedy cannot be complex or nuanced.
Christians are pagan as well as Christian; pagans first and naturally - with Christian understanding and goals added onto that.
Paganism is what connects us with the world - Christianity is what explains the meaning and purpose of this connection.
*
This means that there can be (and should be) 'pagan' solutions to Christian problems.
This happens when the basic problem (e.g. disconnection from Life) may be pre-Christian or sub-Christian; and then pagan remedies (such as re-connection) may be necessary, or at least work better than jumping ahead to specifically-Christian solutions.
This is not un-Christian but simple realism. Christianity includes and transcends all the goods of paganism: why not use them when they work?
*
Dairy of Warnie Lewis (C.S. Lewis's brother) for 4 March 1948.
Whether from cold, temper, depression, or all three, I had a shocking night, and when I tried to pray I found the line 'dead'.
This poignant comment comes from a day when Warnie returned to an unwelcoming home from hospital; where he had landed after a severe and prolonged alcoholic binge. The cause of the binge he gives as "the wearisome cycle of insomnia-drugs-depression-spirits-illness".
So there are many possible reasons from religious, through psychological and including physical why Warnie had a shocking night that particular night - but his experience of finding 'the line dead' when he tried to pray (and most needed help) is what jumped out at me; because I suppose all Christians have experienced this to a greater or lesser extent.
*
When the benefits of prayer are most needed, sometimes - and for whatever reason - the 'connection' to God just doesn't seem to work.
What then? Clearly some kind of Plan B is required; and what 'works' (if anything) will depend on the individual.
Anything requiring other people (such as attending liturgy or participating in Mass) is not timely. Reading scripture works for some people, but again may not be possible - indeed, powers of concentration may be too poor.
One neglected possibility may be to dwell upon a very simple (child-like) vision of the nature of existence - that the world around us is alive and that there is a benign personage behind it all.
There may be some such positive and connective vision in the mind - perhaps from memories of childhood or happy times; perhaps from a book or a movie.
*
The idea is that feeling disconnected, alienated and existentially-alone is the worst thing and prevents any better things; and the remedy cannot be complex or nuanced.
Christians are pagan as well as Christian; pagans first and naturally - with Christian understanding and goals added onto that.
Paganism is what connects us with the world - Christianity is what explains the meaning and purpose of this connection.
*
This means that there can be (and should be) 'pagan' solutions to Christian problems.
This happens when the basic problem (e.g. disconnection from Life) may be pre-Christian or sub-Christian; and then pagan remedies (such as re-connection) may be necessary, or at least work better than jumping ahead to specifically-Christian solutions.
This is not un-Christian but simple realism. Christianity includes and transcends all the goods of paganism: why not use them when they work?
*
Friday 5 September 2014
Analeptic and proleptic (intuitive) thinking - clues for truth, validation of truth
*
Continuing from
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/analeptic-trance.html
*
There is a direct, feeling-based, non-rational way of thinking which Robert Graves termed analeptic and proleptic thinking- analeptic thinking is a vision of the past while proleptic refers to the future.
http://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/intuition-and-the-white-goddess/
This happens in what could be termed a trance state, a state of altered consciousness, somewhat detached from immediacy and distraction - in which some other time or place (or person) or even an idea (a concept, an image, a belief) is perceived and felt as real.
What does this mean?
I think when something is analeptic/ proleptic it means that there is a certain validity and coherence to an idea. It does not mean that it is true - but it means that it is... well, that it is worth considering, worth thinking-about at least.
So, when something appears through analeptic thinking it then needs to be validated in whatever ways appropriate - by logical analysis, experience, new observations and so on.
*
But there is more to it than this; I think intuition is necessary to truth - for it to be meaningful, purposive truth.
Truth is contained-within intuition.
If you don't have an intuition, a personal sense of the reality of a time, place, person, idea, vision, notion... then it cannot be really real.
So, to evaluate an idea that is just an idea - then there must be a process of seeking intuitive confirmation; and unless or until the idea is confirmed by intuition (analeptic or proleptic thought) then it is not rally real and not much use could or should be made of it.
*
Continuing from
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/analeptic-trance.html
*
There is a direct, feeling-based, non-rational way of thinking which Robert Graves termed analeptic and proleptic thinking- analeptic thinking is a vision of the past while proleptic refers to the future.
http://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/intuition-and-the-white-goddess/
This happens in what could be termed a trance state, a state of altered consciousness, somewhat detached from immediacy and distraction - in which some other time or place (or person) or even an idea (a concept, an image, a belief) is perceived and felt as real.
What does this mean?
I think when something is analeptic/ proleptic it means that there is a certain validity and coherence to an idea. It does not mean that it is true - but it means that it is... well, that it is worth considering, worth thinking-about at least.
So, when something appears through analeptic thinking it then needs to be validated in whatever ways appropriate - by logical analysis, experience, new observations and so on.
*
But there is more to it than this; I think intuition is necessary to truth - for it to be meaningful, purposive truth.
Truth is contained-within intuition.
If you don't have an intuition, a personal sense of the reality of a time, place, person, idea, vision, notion... then it cannot be really real.
So, to evaluate an idea that is just an idea - then there must be a process of seeking intuitive confirmation; and unless or until the idea is confirmed by intuition (analeptic or proleptic thought) then it is not rally real and not much use could or should be made of it.
*
Yes, modern people are excessively proccupied with personal development; but - personal development is also intrinsic to Christianity
*
It is true to say that modern people are excessively preoccupied with their own personal meaning of life without sufficient attention to general things.
It is therefore understandable, and probably the correct priority, for Christians to emphasize general duties, general principles, obedience and sacrifice to the needs of others - above personal development...
However, I expect that, like me for much of my life, modern non-Christians are aware that even if everything about Christianity were correct - all its general purposes and precepts - then even all of that is not enough.
The fact that it is not enough, may lead them to assume that:
1. Christians believe that it is enough. And
2. That (therefore) Christianity actually wants its adherents to be undifferentiated 'cookie cutter' clones (and sometimes Christians do talk that way).
However, however - all people are different, things are set-up that way: personal development is part of the divine plan (and an extremely important part) - so cannot and should not be neglected, ignored or suppressed.
And indeed, real and specific personal development is only possible in a context of general purposes and precepts - so the modern notion of personal development in isolation from religion or any general system of objective beliefs and duties is sheer nonsense.
It is true to say that modern people are excessively preoccupied with their own personal meaning of life without sufficient attention to general things.
It is therefore understandable, and probably the correct priority, for Christians to emphasize general duties, general principles, obedience and sacrifice to the needs of others - above personal development...
However, I expect that, like me for much of my life, modern non-Christians are aware that even if everything about Christianity were correct - all its general purposes and precepts - then even all of that is not enough.
The fact that it is not enough, may lead them to assume that:
1. Christians believe that it is enough. And
2. That (therefore) Christianity actually wants its adherents to be undifferentiated 'cookie cutter' clones (and sometimes Christians do talk that way).
However, however - all people are different, things are set-up that way: personal development is part of the divine plan (and an extremely important part) - so cannot and should not be neglected, ignored or suppressed.
And indeed, real and specific personal development is only possible in a context of general purposes and precepts - so the modern notion of personal development in isolation from religion or any general system of objective beliefs and duties is sheer nonsense.
The evil of the Mass Media - the greatest evil of which I know
*
I am now sufficiently detached from mass media outputs that I am continually struck by the alien-ness of the whole business. I particular, I am repeatedly struck by the fact that no matter what evils are being reported or discussed in the mainstream mass media: the mass media makes them worse.
*
No matter how utterly horrific something may be in and of itself - once the mass media gets hold of it, it becomes worse.
In 1001 ways, the mass media makes things worse - mis-attributing blame, blaming the innocent, hiding and excusing the guilty, dwelling sadistically on suffering, causing suffering, hounding victims, advocating violence on the wrong side and prohibiting violence on the right side, creating wicked taboos and breaking sacred taboos... in general propagating lust, spite, envy, hatred, confusion and inversion of values, despair and all manner of evils.
*
No situation is so bad that the mass media cannot and does - day by day, hour by hour, as a matter of routine - make it much, much worse.
And no situation is so bad, that the mass media does not encourage more of the same.
*
As an 'entity' the mainstream mass media is by far the most wicked THING that has even been in existence - because (not being a human personage and therefore not limited by the minimal intrinsic coherence of a human; but a spirit of evil using human personages - who consent to being used) the mass media can and does operate to destroy all Goods of all types in all directions - not simultaneously but sequentially.
This is (must be) the work of the greatest evil of which I know - of more than human evil - of the greatest evil in existence.
*
Note added: I am assuming the truth of the standard Christian belief that advocating sin is far worse than actually sinning; because sinning is (to a significant extent) unavoidable while advocating sin is deliberate.
REF: http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk/
*
I am now sufficiently detached from mass media outputs that I am continually struck by the alien-ness of the whole business. I particular, I am repeatedly struck by the fact that no matter what evils are being reported or discussed in the mainstream mass media: the mass media makes them worse.
*
No matter how utterly horrific something may be in and of itself - once the mass media gets hold of it, it becomes worse.
In 1001 ways, the mass media makes things worse - mis-attributing blame, blaming the innocent, hiding and excusing the guilty, dwelling sadistically on suffering, causing suffering, hounding victims, advocating violence on the wrong side and prohibiting violence on the right side, creating wicked taboos and breaking sacred taboos... in general propagating lust, spite, envy, hatred, confusion and inversion of values, despair and all manner of evils.
*
No situation is so bad that the mass media cannot and does - day by day, hour by hour, as a matter of routine - make it much, much worse.
And no situation is so bad, that the mass media does not encourage more of the same.
*
As an 'entity' the mainstream mass media is by far the most wicked THING that has even been in existence - because (not being a human personage and therefore not limited by the minimal intrinsic coherence of a human; but a spirit of evil using human personages - who consent to being used) the mass media can and does operate to destroy all Goods of all types in all directions - not simultaneously but sequentially.
This is (must be) the work of the greatest evil of which I know - of more than human evil - of the greatest evil in existence.
*
Note added: I am assuming the truth of the standard Christian belief that advocating sin is far worse than actually sinning; because sinning is (to a significant extent) unavoidable while advocating sin is deliberate.
REF: http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk/
*
Thursday 4 September 2014
In England - Where does the good stuff come from? What is the source of strength?
*
That there is good stuff in advanced modernity, deep and interwoven, is clear. That it is not enough and is too weak is also clear.
The nature and source of feebleness, weakness, nihilism and self-hating suicide is also clear enough - as is what we ought to do about it.
http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk
But I do not know, cannot locate, the source and nature of the English goodness that there is. Beauty has not been destroyed and is sometimes enhanced. In private, there are trustworthy and honest people. There is an urge to do good work: and good work is certainly done (in private, at least).
Strategically there is nothing at all: all big plans, all long terms plans are bad. What most people do with most of their time (the mass media) is bad - deadly bad: because English people believe their chosen media sources lock-stock-and-barrel.
Consequently, there is only manic hyperactivity (for a few people, for a while) or weariness; looking-ahead there is only the hope of pleasure, comfort, diversion and the fear of the opposites - consequently all high art is poison, and long has been.
Yet at this tactical, local, individual level there is much good - and good that is strong enough to withstand the relentless and rising tide of evil.
Its source and nourishment I do not know. But my hope is that since I do not know the source and nourishment which sustains actual good, there is hope that this source could do more: could even save us! - if we would let it, if we were courageous enough to live by it.
*
That there is good stuff in advanced modernity, deep and interwoven, is clear. That it is not enough and is too weak is also clear.
The nature and source of feebleness, weakness, nihilism and self-hating suicide is also clear enough - as is what we ought to do about it.
http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk
But I do not know, cannot locate, the source and nature of the English goodness that there is. Beauty has not been destroyed and is sometimes enhanced. In private, there are trustworthy and honest people. There is an urge to do good work: and good work is certainly done (in private, at least).
Strategically there is nothing at all: all big plans, all long terms plans are bad. What most people do with most of their time (the mass media) is bad - deadly bad: because English people believe their chosen media sources lock-stock-and-barrel.
Consequently, there is only manic hyperactivity (for a few people, for a while) or weariness; looking-ahead there is only the hope of pleasure, comfort, diversion and the fear of the opposites - consequently all high art is poison, and long has been.
Yet at this tactical, local, individual level there is much good - and good that is strong enough to withstand the relentless and rising tide of evil.
Its source and nourishment I do not know. But my hope is that since I do not know the source and nourishment which sustains actual good, there is hope that this source could do more: could even save us! - if we would let it, if we were courageous enough to live by it.
*
The lecture as teaching method, and the purpose of a university
*
The usefulness of a teaching method - or not - depends on the purpose of the specific educational programme. When there is no real purpose (except to get some kind of qualification) then there is really nothing educational to be said about teaching methods.
For the great majority of students in the great majority of higher educational institutions, there is no educational purpose at all; for the great majority of degree programmes there is no real educational purpose - therefore all discussions on teaching methods are futile.
Such discussions become relevant only when both students and colleges know - honestly - what real educational goal/s they are really trying to achieve.
Here, as in so many places, habitual dishonesty is lethal; yet what we have in relation to higher education is worse even than that: it is strategic dishonesty.
No wonder scholarship and research are rotten: how could it be otherwise?
*
The usefulness of a teaching method - or not - depends on the purpose of the specific educational programme. When there is no real purpose (except to get some kind of qualification) then there is really nothing educational to be said about teaching methods.
For the great majority of students in the great majority of higher educational institutions, there is no educational purpose at all; for the great majority of degree programmes there is no real educational purpose - therefore all discussions on teaching methods are futile.
Such discussions become relevant only when both students and colleges know - honestly - what real educational goal/s they are really trying to achieve.
Here, as in so many places, habitual dishonesty is lethal; yet what we have in relation to higher education is worse even than that: it is strategic dishonesty.
No wonder scholarship and research are rotten: how could it be otherwise?
*
Wednesday 3 September 2014
There is only one type of modern academic research
*
All science, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities have collapsed into a single academic research subject: that subject is getting funding.
Short-termist and low status research is about getting this particular grant; the difference between the 'also rans' and 'successful' academics is that high status researchers are confident and competent enough to look-ahead at optimizing future grants.
Funding determines what scientists do (i.e. whatever gets funded), how they do it (ditto), and how they report it (i.e. whatever is best for getting more and larger future grants).
And in this fund-seeking process; vocation, interest, usefulness, beauty, truth and honesty have zero part to play.
http://corruption-of-science.blogspot.co.uk/
*
All science, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities have collapsed into a single academic research subject: that subject is getting funding.
Short-termist and low status research is about getting this particular grant; the difference between the 'also rans' and 'successful' academics is that high status researchers are confident and competent enough to look-ahead at optimizing future grants.
Funding determines what scientists do (i.e. whatever gets funded), how they do it (ditto), and how they report it (i.e. whatever is best for getting more and larger future grants).
And in this fund-seeking process; vocation, interest, usefulness, beauty, truth and honesty have zero part to play.
http://corruption-of-science.blogspot.co.uk/
*
What is the specific purpose of (your) life?
*
Christianity is not sufficient to tell you personally the purpose of your specific life - Christian guidance is for all times and persons and situations, so guidance can be only general.
Why should it be personal? Because it is clear from the nature of ourselves and the world, and the fact that God designed it; that Men are not meant to be exactly the same or to do exactly the same.
So the exact answer differs for each of us, which (usually) means it needs to be discovered.
How, and on what basis?
How to discover the specific purpose of each of our individual lives depends upon our personal understanding of the nature of true and valid guidance: it depends on our understanding of who, or what, can and should be trusted.
My reasoning goes as follows: we inhabit the creation of a loving God, and he designed the world as a place for spiritual progression. The (extremely long term) aim or hope of this is - in brief - our divinization: that each person be given opportunity to experience, learn, develop towards godhood (the process variously termed theosis and sanctification).
And the purpose of us developing towards godhood is that we become adopted as co-heirs with Christ, fully-adult divine friends of God; so that we may live in His presence, communicate deeply and richly with Him, participate fully in His work - and so on.
Part of this ultimate and long term aim and hope is that each person is, and is intended to be, unique – because of course each divine friend would be intended to be different (no point in having identical friends), and each unique developed person would bring something different to the society of Heaven.
So; much of life is about discovering and pursuing our own uniqueness; by all good guidance possible, to the greatest extent we can manage, and inevitably by trial and error, aspiration and repentance etc.
This is possible because we have both general external guidance from God (variously available via scripture, the church, sound tradition, literature, wise persons, loving family and friends etc); and also a bit of God inside each of us – God's gift of a divine spark or a glowing coal of divinity; which works with our own distinct pre-mortal individuality as an specific evaluation/ guidance system – including pointing us at specific goals.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/discernment-or-inner-guidance-system.html
Locating this inner guidance system, discerning its guidance - and following it (amidst distractions and confusions produced by the environment of irrelevant and bad guidance); is therefore a vital task for those who do not already find it obvious.
Organized religions, like all human institutions, have a tendency to lapse into neglecting individuality, and to operate a cookie-cutter idea of identi-clones - equating purpose with duty, and duty with obedience to general rules.
But this is (even at best, when true, valid and necessary) both insufficient and lop-sided guidance; because the nature of purpose of life entails discovering, locating and using the inner guidance system.
And if you cannot already do it - discovery, location and usage should be made a major priority.
*
Christianity is not sufficient to tell you personally the purpose of your specific life - Christian guidance is for all times and persons and situations, so guidance can be only general.
Why should it be personal? Because it is clear from the nature of ourselves and the world, and the fact that God designed it; that Men are not meant to be exactly the same or to do exactly the same.
So the exact answer differs for each of us, which (usually) means it needs to be discovered.
How, and on what basis?
How to discover the specific purpose of each of our individual lives depends upon our personal understanding of the nature of true and valid guidance: it depends on our understanding of who, or what, can and should be trusted.
My reasoning goes as follows: we inhabit the creation of a loving God, and he designed the world as a place for spiritual progression. The (extremely long term) aim or hope of this is - in brief - our divinization: that each person be given opportunity to experience, learn, develop towards godhood (the process variously termed theosis and sanctification).
And the purpose of us developing towards godhood is that we become adopted as co-heirs with Christ, fully-adult divine friends of God; so that we may live in His presence, communicate deeply and richly with Him, participate fully in His work - and so on.
Part of this ultimate and long term aim and hope is that each person is, and is intended to be, unique – because of course each divine friend would be intended to be different (no point in having identical friends), and each unique developed person would bring something different to the society of Heaven.
So; much of life is about discovering and pursuing our own uniqueness; by all good guidance possible, to the greatest extent we can manage, and inevitably by trial and error, aspiration and repentance etc.
This is possible because we have both general external guidance from God (variously available via scripture, the church, sound tradition, literature, wise persons, loving family and friends etc); and also a bit of God inside each of us – God's gift of a divine spark or a glowing coal of divinity; which works with our own distinct pre-mortal individuality as an specific evaluation/ guidance system – including pointing us at specific goals.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/discernment-or-inner-guidance-system.html
Locating this inner guidance system, discerning its guidance - and following it (amidst distractions and confusions produced by the environment of irrelevant and bad guidance); is therefore a vital task for those who do not already find it obvious.
Organized religions, like all human institutions, have a tendency to lapse into neglecting individuality, and to operate a cookie-cutter idea of identi-clones - equating purpose with duty, and duty with obedience to general rules.
But this is (even at best, when true, valid and necessary) both insufficient and lop-sided guidance; because the nature of purpose of life entails discovering, locating and using the inner guidance system.
And if you cannot already do it - discovery, location and usage should be made a major priority.
*
Tuesday 2 September 2014
What is the point of the Old Testament (and why is there So Much of it?)
*
I would guess that this is a question that strikes most Christians at one point or another.
And in practice, most Christians don't really take much notice of the Old Testament. The old Church of England was an exception - because a regular church-goer would hear much of the OT read-through each year. However, probably all Christian denominations focus on the New Testament, and some almost exclusively so (for instance, some modern evangelicals).
Yet when we pick-up the Bible - most of it is Old Testament. Why so much?
*
The usual explanation is the the Old points-to the New... OK, but why is there so much pointing? Surely a bit of pointing would be enough - not hundreds of pages?
*
Well, there it is; and it is apparently up to us to discover what is the best use to make of the OT.
My suggestion is to regard it as the history of God's interactions with His people; told mostly from the perspective of those people - in other words from an (inspired) human's-eye-view and not, therefore, from a God's-eye-view.
(This is a possible to answer to why the OT is so long. So we can 'correct-for' the multiplicity of different perspectives.)
If regarded in this fashion, the Old Testament looks like a collection of examples of the constancy of God's personal loving concern for His people - this a constant factor lying behind what are depicted as great variations in His people's understanding, love and concern with God.
Since there are multiple examples over time, and multiple forms (annal, fable, poem, prophecy etc) there is redundancy in the OT; but since there is redundancy (as well as multiplicity of forms), we are not (I think) supposed to regard the OT as either wholly essential, or complete; nor as saying the same thing as the NT; nor that all parts of the OT are saying exactly the same thing (rather, they illustrate broadly the same general theme).
*
I think we can (and perhaps should) reasonably regard the OT as a resource or compendium to be probed and explored for particular and personal helps in our understanding of God's relation with His people (and therefore ourselves).
In practice, this is probably almost exactly what is done by most Christians - but I don't think we should feel so guilty about it - I mean about picking and choosing within the OT, and leaving-out a lot of it altogether!
In a sense, that is probably what the OT is actually for! Something for everybody, but everything for nobody.
*
I would guess that this is a question that strikes most Christians at one point or another.
And in practice, most Christians don't really take much notice of the Old Testament. The old Church of England was an exception - because a regular church-goer would hear much of the OT read-through each year. However, probably all Christian denominations focus on the New Testament, and some almost exclusively so (for instance, some modern evangelicals).
Yet when we pick-up the Bible - most of it is Old Testament. Why so much?
*
The usual explanation is the the Old points-to the New... OK, but why is there so much pointing? Surely a bit of pointing would be enough - not hundreds of pages?
*
Well, there it is; and it is apparently up to us to discover what is the best use to make of the OT.
My suggestion is to regard it as the history of God's interactions with His people; told mostly from the perspective of those people - in other words from an (inspired) human's-eye-view and not, therefore, from a God's-eye-view.
(This is a possible to answer to why the OT is so long. So we can 'correct-for' the multiplicity of different perspectives.)
If regarded in this fashion, the Old Testament looks like a collection of examples of the constancy of God's personal loving concern for His people - this a constant factor lying behind what are depicted as great variations in His people's understanding, love and concern with God.
Since there are multiple examples over time, and multiple forms (annal, fable, poem, prophecy etc) there is redundancy in the OT; but since there is redundancy (as well as multiplicity of forms), we are not (I think) supposed to regard the OT as either wholly essential, or complete; nor as saying the same thing as the NT; nor that all parts of the OT are saying exactly the same thing (rather, they illustrate broadly the same general theme).
*
I think we can (and perhaps should) reasonably regard the OT as a resource or compendium to be probed and explored for particular and personal helps in our understanding of God's relation with His people (and therefore ourselves).
In practice, this is probably almost exactly what is done by most Christians - but I don't think we should feel so guilty about it - I mean about picking and choosing within the OT, and leaving-out a lot of it altogether!
In a sense, that is probably what the OT is actually for! Something for everybody, but everything for nobody.
*
Glastonbury versus Wells
*
Glastonbury and Wells are adjacent towns in Somerset, England - I visited both recently, and they make an interesting comparison.
Glastonbury is world famous as the centre of legendary Britain: the place where Jesus visited with Joseph of Arimathea ('And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains green?'), and/or where Joseph of Arimathea visited after Jesus's Ascension to set-up the first Church in Europe; and the Island of Avalon where Kind Arthur went at the end of his earthly life, where Arthur's tomb was discovered.
More prosaically, in Medieval times Glastonbury had at times perhaps the greatest, most scholarly Abbey in England. And A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys is considered one of the greatest-non-canonical novels in English Literature.
And so on.
*
But more recently (since the mid 1970s), Glastonbury has become the undisputed centre of New Age spirituality in Britain - and the venue for the biggest and lamest pseudo-sixties annual pop festival.
It is, to be candid - a seedy place, inhabited by a distinctly mixed population. Quite a lot of shabby weirdos, burnt-out cases and doormats and (presumably living-off them) and quite a lot of hard-eyed exploiters.
The ruined abbey is prohibitively expensive to visit and completely obscured by high walls to ensure nobody can get a free look.
In sum, with the exception of the magnificent Tor (well worth a climb) and a few decent shops (like Gothic Image); modern Glastonbury is peculiarly characterless, yet also an oppressive and sinister place - and a clear and unambiguous demonstration of why New Age can never be a proper or good religion.
*
Wells, on the other hand - just a few miles down the road - is the smallest city in England (that is: the smallest place with a cathedral) - a tiny gem of medieval and other old architecture. It has a happy and somewhat magical feel about it - probably leaking out from the stones.
Although the Church of England is now spiritually almost moribund and increasingly openly anti-Christian - it still has perhaps a decade or two of inertial 'Barchester'-like beauty and elegance to run; and the Church has, over the centuries, kept the place beautifully - as has the Wells Cathedral School (derived from the choir school) whose boarding kids apparently inhabit all manner of delightful old buildings dotted around the place.
So - if you happen to be in that particular part of the Kingdom - I would advise making Wells your priority. Glastonbury is not all bad - but on the whole it is a lesson rather than an example.
*
Glastonbury
Wells
Glastonbury and Wells are adjacent towns in Somerset, England - I visited both recently, and they make an interesting comparison.
Glastonbury is world famous as the centre of legendary Britain: the place where Jesus visited with Joseph of Arimathea ('And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains green?'), and/or where Joseph of Arimathea visited after Jesus's Ascension to set-up the first Church in Europe; and the Island of Avalon where Kind Arthur went at the end of his earthly life, where Arthur's tomb was discovered.
More prosaically, in Medieval times Glastonbury had at times perhaps the greatest, most scholarly Abbey in England. And A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys is considered one of the greatest-non-canonical novels in English Literature.
And so on.
*
But more recently (since the mid 1970s), Glastonbury has become the undisputed centre of New Age spirituality in Britain - and the venue for the biggest and lamest pseudo-sixties annual pop festival.
It is, to be candid - a seedy place, inhabited by a distinctly mixed population. Quite a lot of shabby weirdos, burnt-out cases and doormats and (presumably living-off them) and quite a lot of hard-eyed exploiters.
The ruined abbey is prohibitively expensive to visit and completely obscured by high walls to ensure nobody can get a free look.
In sum, with the exception of the magnificent Tor (well worth a climb) and a few decent shops (like Gothic Image); modern Glastonbury is peculiarly characterless, yet also an oppressive and sinister place - and a clear and unambiguous demonstration of why New Age can never be a proper or good religion.
*
Wells, on the other hand - just a few miles down the road - is the smallest city in England (that is: the smallest place with a cathedral) - a tiny gem of medieval and other old architecture. It has a happy and somewhat magical feel about it - probably leaking out from the stones.
Although the Church of England is now spiritually almost moribund and increasingly openly anti-Christian - it still has perhaps a decade or two of inertial 'Barchester'-like beauty and elegance to run; and the Church has, over the centuries, kept the place beautifully - as has the Wells Cathedral School (derived from the choir school) whose boarding kids apparently inhabit all manner of delightful old buildings dotted around the place.
So - if you happen to be in that particular part of the Kingdom - I would advise making Wells your priority. Glastonbury is not all bad - but on the whole it is a lesson rather than an example.
*
The Nature of God - Joseph Smith versus Charles Williams
*
It seems (according to the King Follet discourse) that at the end of his short life Joseph Smith may have felt that the single most important element of his teaching - of the radical re-making of the what Christianity had become - was to restore the simple, concrete, literal, common sense and obvious understanding of God the Father - as He is revealed in the Bible.
Such things that God is a person, has a body (in whose image our own bodies are modelled), and more importantly has emotions - that God and Man are of the same basic kind or nature; and that despite that God and Man differ vastly (one might, using the word causally, say we differ 'infinitely') the difference between us is quantitative, and not a distinction of two utterly different orders of being.
*
It is like blinkers being removed!
Suddenly, the Bible's great promise that we are children of God, that He is our Father, that we are offered the chance - by the work of Jesus Christ - to become Christ's co-heirs (hence divine)... suddenly all this makes common-sense!
Suddenly we can speak the Lord's Prayer with comprehension and conviction; instead of...
Well, instead of beginning the very basics of Christian instruction or explanation by erecting a philosophical filter between us and the plain words - so that almost everything is re-interpreted to mean something other-than the obvious sense.
*
As an example, take the opening of Charles Williams's 1938 book He came down from Heaven in which he sets-about explicating the first phrase of the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father which art in Heaven".
One might have supposed that the prayer which Jesus taught us would be reasonably lucid; but immediately the philosophical abstractions are inserted between the words and our understanding (or perhaps I should say our 'understanding' - because to insist that abstract philosophical terms are the real truth is effectively to block understanding permanently and ineradicably).
Williams opens the commentary on the Lord's Prayer as follows; his words are in italics, my comments are in square brackets:
Its opening words undoubtedly imply a place in which "Our Father" exists, [instantly the basic address to God as our Father is problematized by surrounding the phrase with scare quotes] a spatial locality inhabited by God.
Against this continual suggestion so easily insinuated into minds already too much disposed to it, ['continual suggestion' implies that people are being misled, and 'insinuated' implies that this misleading is deliberately covert, and 'minds already disposed' implies that such minds are either tainted with evil or stupid in drawing such a conclusion.]
the great theological definitions of God [by contrast, to the wickedness, foolishness and dishonesty of simple understanding, the theological definitions are called 'great']
which forbid men to attribute to him any nature inhabiting place are less frequently found and less effectively imagined. They have to be remembered. [Here Williams starkly asserts that men are 'forbidden' to believe that God has a material body occupying a locality - it is therefore said to be compulsory for us to regard God as immaterial and unlocalized - despite the candid acknowledgment that these beliefs in the abstract properties of God are both unusual and in practice unimaginable - yet this unsuual and imaginable thing is what we 'have to' do!]
*
I could go on but it would be tedious and repetitive. Suffice to say that Williams is stating here something that over the centuries has been usual for intellectuals engaged in presenting Christianity in summary: which is to state Christianity through the lens of negative theology (the theology of denials, the listings of what God is not: such that He lacks body, parts or passions in the words of the Westminster Confession) and in terms of abstract terms such as: omnipresence (God being everywhere and unlocalizeds - as asserted above); omnipotence (God being able to accomplish anything and everything which can be accomplished); existing unchanging outside the universe, outside time; and God being divided into three persons yet also being one person - and all the rest of this complex, incomprehensible, abstract, intellectual stuff.
*
It was Joseph Smith's early and astonishing achievement to get past this vast and obstructive apparatus and remake theology on the basis of something close to a plain and commonsensical understanding of scripture.
Of course, he did a lot more than this, and Mormonism contains a lot more than this; but this was the most profound - and profoundly welcome - insight he provided: that Christianity remade on the basis of a commonsense understanding of God 1. is coherent; and 2. is still Christianity.
Joseph Smith rediscovered God as a person, as our Father; as someone sufficiently comprehensible thus knowable; and, even more, as someone with whom each of us could imaginably aspire to become a divine 'friend', a son or daughter (albeit at the end of a vastly prolonged incremental and accumulative process of spiritual progression, theosis, sanctification, divinization).
*
It seems (according to the King Follet discourse) that at the end of his short life Joseph Smith may have felt that the single most important element of his teaching - of the radical re-making of the what Christianity had become - was to restore the simple, concrete, literal, common sense and obvious understanding of God the Father - as He is revealed in the Bible.
Such things that God is a person, has a body (in whose image our own bodies are modelled), and more importantly has emotions - that God and Man are of the same basic kind or nature; and that despite that God and Man differ vastly (one might, using the word causally, say we differ 'infinitely') the difference between us is quantitative, and not a distinction of two utterly different orders of being.
*
It is like blinkers being removed!
Suddenly, the Bible's great promise that we are children of God, that He is our Father, that we are offered the chance - by the work of Jesus Christ - to become Christ's co-heirs (hence divine)... suddenly all this makes common-sense!
Suddenly we can speak the Lord's Prayer with comprehension and conviction; instead of...
Well, instead of beginning the very basics of Christian instruction or explanation by erecting a philosophical filter between us and the plain words - so that almost everything is re-interpreted to mean something other-than the obvious sense.
*
As an example, take the opening of Charles Williams's 1938 book He came down from Heaven in which he sets-about explicating the first phrase of the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father which art in Heaven".
One might have supposed that the prayer which Jesus taught us would be reasonably lucid; but immediately the philosophical abstractions are inserted between the words and our understanding (or perhaps I should say our 'understanding' - because to insist that abstract philosophical terms are the real truth is effectively to block understanding permanently and ineradicably).
Williams opens the commentary on the Lord's Prayer as follows; his words are in italics, my comments are in square brackets:
Its opening words undoubtedly imply a place in which "Our Father" exists, [instantly the basic address to God as our Father is problematized by surrounding the phrase with scare quotes] a spatial locality inhabited by God.
Against this continual suggestion so easily insinuated into minds already too much disposed to it, ['continual suggestion' implies that people are being misled, and 'insinuated' implies that this misleading is deliberately covert, and 'minds already disposed' implies that such minds are either tainted with evil or stupid in drawing such a conclusion.]
the great theological definitions of God [by contrast, to the wickedness, foolishness and dishonesty of simple understanding, the theological definitions are called 'great']
which forbid men to attribute to him any nature inhabiting place are less frequently found and less effectively imagined. They have to be remembered. [Here Williams starkly asserts that men are 'forbidden' to believe that God has a material body occupying a locality - it is therefore said to be compulsory for us to regard God as immaterial and unlocalized - despite the candid acknowledgment that these beliefs in the abstract properties of God are both unusual and in practice unimaginable - yet this unsuual and imaginable thing is what we 'have to' do!]
*
I could go on but it would be tedious and repetitive. Suffice to say that Williams is stating here something that over the centuries has been usual for intellectuals engaged in presenting Christianity in summary: which is to state Christianity through the lens of negative theology (the theology of denials, the listings of what God is not: such that He lacks body, parts or passions in the words of the Westminster Confession) and in terms of abstract terms such as: omnipresence (God being everywhere and unlocalizeds - as asserted above); omnipotence (God being able to accomplish anything and everything which can be accomplished); existing unchanging outside the universe, outside time; and God being divided into three persons yet also being one person - and all the rest of this complex, incomprehensible, abstract, intellectual stuff.
*
It was Joseph Smith's early and astonishing achievement to get past this vast and obstructive apparatus and remake theology on the basis of something close to a plain and commonsensical understanding of scripture.
Of course, he did a lot more than this, and Mormonism contains a lot more than this; but this was the most profound - and profoundly welcome - insight he provided: that Christianity remade on the basis of a commonsense understanding of God 1. is coherent; and 2. is still Christianity.
Joseph Smith rediscovered God as a person, as our Father; as someone sufficiently comprehensible thus knowable; and, even more, as someone with whom each of us could imaginably aspire to become a divine 'friend', a son or daughter (albeit at the end of a vastly prolonged incremental and accumulative process of spiritual progression, theosis, sanctification, divinization).
*
Monday 1 September 2014
Why is scripture so unclear? Wittgenstein suggests
*
Culture and Value by Ludwig Wittgenstein translated by Peter Winch (1997) - a note from 1937:
Why is ... Scripture so unclear?
If we want to warn someone of a terrible danger, do we go about it by telling him a riddle whose solution will be the warning?
- But who is to say that the Scripture really is unclear? Isn't it possible that it was essential in this case to 'tell a riddle'? And that, on the other hand, giving a more direct warning would necessarily have had the wrong effect?
God has four people recount the life of his incarnate Son, in each case differently and with inconsistencies - but might we not say: It is important that this narrative should not be more than quite averagely historically plausible just so that this should not be taken as the essential, decisive thing?
So that the letter should not be believed more strongly than is proper and the spirit may receive its due. I.e. what you are supposed to see cannot be communicated even by the best and most accurate historian; and therefore a mediocre account suffices, is even to be preferred.
For that too can tell you what you are supposed to be told. (Roughly in the way a mediocre stage set can be better than a sophisticated one, painted trees better than real ones, - because these might distract attention from what matters.)
*
Comment. I think this is right. I read the passage nearly thirty years ago (when I was an atheist) and it has stuck in my mind since - although I did not re-read it until today.
My understanding of what Wittgenstein says is that the form of the Gospels (and of the Bible as a whole) tells us the nature of the doctrine which is being communicated
- Negatively that the doctrine is not about a mass of precise statements, and positively that what is important about it is being clearly communicated both despite and because of the unclarities of its communication.
In other words, if (as we believe) Scripture is true, then it is also clear - clear enough, clear in the necessary ways.
*
This fits my oft-stated conviction that the proof-texting/ chapter-and-verse way of reading scripture segmentally - as if it was a law book or list of rules - obscures its truth and leads to confusion and conflict.
(And the same applies to abstracted summaries such as the Catholic catechisms and the Thirty Nine Articles and the Westminster Confession and Articles of Faith.)
Or, at least, such a method requires constant checking back against the primary truth of scripture; which is to be found in the simple overall truths rather than the parts.
(Just as the morality of good law is to be found in the spirit, and not in the letter - and indeed when the letter of the law is - rarely - good, this is usually for the wrong reason.)
*
Culture and Value by Ludwig Wittgenstein translated by Peter Winch (1997) - a note from 1937:
Why is ... Scripture so unclear?
If we want to warn someone of a terrible danger, do we go about it by telling him a riddle whose solution will be the warning?
- But who is to say that the Scripture really is unclear? Isn't it possible that it was essential in this case to 'tell a riddle'? And that, on the other hand, giving a more direct warning would necessarily have had the wrong effect?
God has four people recount the life of his incarnate Son, in each case differently and with inconsistencies - but might we not say: It is important that this narrative should not be more than quite averagely historically plausible just so that this should not be taken as the essential, decisive thing?
So that the letter should not be believed more strongly than is proper and the spirit may receive its due. I.e. what you are supposed to see cannot be communicated even by the best and most accurate historian; and therefore a mediocre account suffices, is even to be preferred.
For that too can tell you what you are supposed to be told. (Roughly in the way a mediocre stage set can be better than a sophisticated one, painted trees better than real ones, - because these might distract attention from what matters.)
*
Comment. I think this is right. I read the passage nearly thirty years ago (when I was an atheist) and it has stuck in my mind since - although I did not re-read it until today.
My understanding of what Wittgenstein says is that the form of the Gospels (and of the Bible as a whole) tells us the nature of the doctrine which is being communicated
- Negatively that the doctrine is not about a mass of precise statements, and positively that what is important about it is being clearly communicated both despite and because of the unclarities of its communication.
In other words, if (as we believe) Scripture is true, then it is also clear - clear enough, clear in the necessary ways.
*
This fits my oft-stated conviction that the proof-texting/ chapter-and-verse way of reading scripture segmentally - as if it was a law book or list of rules - obscures its truth and leads to confusion and conflict.
(And the same applies to abstracted summaries such as the Catholic catechisms and the Thirty Nine Articles and the Westminster Confession and Articles of Faith.)
Or, at least, such a method requires constant checking back against the primary truth of scripture; which is to be found in the simple overall truths rather than the parts.
(Just as the morality of good law is to be found in the spirit, and not in the letter - and indeed when the letter of the law is - rarely - good, this is usually for the wrong reason.)
*
The anti-Christian effects of superstition, propitiation, sacrifice
*
I feel in myself a deep, existential worry which is superstitious, and relates to the idea of propitiating - ultimately by sacrifice.
So, I resist expressing happiness, confidence, hope, optimism - I resist allowing myself to feel confidence in the future - I am to some extent constrained in being honestly positive about such matters, for fear that it will trigger resentment, revenge, reaction from others.
It feels like there is something which regards my feeling happiness, confidence, hope and optimism as being arrogant or 'cocky'; and needing to be taken-down-a-peg and taught-a-lesson.
I therefore feel negatively-compelled to think things, and to avoid thinking things, from a fear that someone or some-thing will be offended, prickly, insulted, jealous; it is a fundamentally superstitious attitude of living life among rules - mostly unknown - which prescribe and prohibit and are zealously enforced; and the main business of life as being rule-following and avoidance of rule-breaking - and the servile serving-out of punishments for our inevitable breaches.
*
This constraint motivated by fear of reprisal may be realistic in human society - given the endemic nature of spitefulness, and the 'dog in the manger' attitude of so many people who delight in the misery of others and whose main concern is that nobody else should have more or be more than themselves.
(This is, indeed, the case for such high-flown garb as 'equality', egalitarianism, sexual liberation, democracy and so on.)
*
But there is more to it than this. The constraint is also (and perhaps primarily) inner - it is present even in the privacy of my mind, of my stream of conscious thought.
This is not surprising since belief in gods, spirits, ghosts, malicious ancestors at large - belief in 'the supernatural' in general - is spontaneous and natural to humans - we believe that our inner thoughts are to some extent accessible and shared and communicated, and that among those who share them are powerful and malicious entities (something like the Christian concept of demons).
This is a powerful constraint - and I suspect it is a very general factor in human affairs (although I can only observe it indirectly in other people - I and sure it is there). However, although general, spontaneous, natural - I suspect it is anti-Christian in a developed sense of Christianity - for the simple reason that it implies God (who knows our thoughts) is not fully loving, but is prone to the same kind of resentment and revenge as other people - indeed the worst kind of people - in this world.
Yet at the same time (because it is general, natural, spontaneous to humans) this tendency to assume that God really does have a resentful and vengeful attitude is a constant tendency to which individuals and organizations and society tend to recur (for motivations which may be 'good' - e.g. encouraging or enforcing good behaviour - as well as wicked).
*
This can be seen even among our own young children, who sometimes act towards us in a way that shows they are afraid that we do not really love them, that we need propitiating.
Sometimes the children are right - because parents are not perfect; but they are fundamentally wrong in that loving parents really are not motivated by resentment and really do not need to be propitiated - indeed a loving parent is appalled and deeply sorrowful to perceive this attitude in his children - an attitude based on fear.
*
So, the situation seems to be that it is (at least to some significant extent) natural for humans to treat God as if he were a demon; and demons (I think) really do want to be treated with superstitious concern, propitiated and sacrificed-to.
Demons (presumably) want us never to be free of the constraining fear to express (or even to feel) an attitude that is positive care-free, hope-full. They want humans to cringe, to be eaten up with anxiety about deflecting bad luck, evil influences, they want us to be hog-ridden by superstitious observations, they want us to be always and repeatedly destroying good things as 'sacrifices' - and to regard this destruction of good things as necessary to deflect divine 'wrath'.
*
Unsurprisingly, because humans are error prone and yield to sin, this attitude of constraining fear has been (to varying extents, but sometimes very fully) incorporated into Christianity - the attitude that God watching out for us to trip up, get angry, punish us - unless this is deflected by propitiation and sacrifice - by a general human attitude of pessimism, expressions of misery... an attitude which is in fact and to some significant extent a dishonestly negative expression of our state of mind.
People come to fear - even inside their heads - a full and honest expression of positive and happy states of mind; asif this would trigger the jealous resentment of God! This I feel in myself, and I believe I perceive it in people all around me.
But I believe it is anti-Christian - a flaw, an error, a sin - a consequence of insufficient Christian faith and not a sign of Christian faith: this anxious, superstitious focus on propitiation and sacrifice is itself an insult to God rather than respect for God; deeply saddening to God, rather than what he wants from us.
*
Indeed, when we treat God as if He were a demon, it is analogous to someone who falsely accuses her loving parents of 'abusing' her. It is to treat our loving Father in Heaven as if He were an abuser.
That is a measure of how serious an error we are making; how serious a sin it is to feel constrained against expressing - even to ourselves - our happiness, hope, confidence.
*
Note: On this view, Christ as a propitiation and sacrifice is a matter of getting all that stuff out-of-the-way; of telling us not to worry about it any more because Christ has utterly and permanently taken care of it.
I feel in myself a deep, existential worry which is superstitious, and relates to the idea of propitiating - ultimately by sacrifice.
So, I resist expressing happiness, confidence, hope, optimism - I resist allowing myself to feel confidence in the future - I am to some extent constrained in being honestly positive about such matters, for fear that it will trigger resentment, revenge, reaction from others.
It feels like there is something which regards my feeling happiness, confidence, hope and optimism as being arrogant or 'cocky'; and needing to be taken-down-a-peg and taught-a-lesson.
I therefore feel negatively-compelled to think things, and to avoid thinking things, from a fear that someone or some-thing will be offended, prickly, insulted, jealous; it is a fundamentally superstitious attitude of living life among rules - mostly unknown - which prescribe and prohibit and are zealously enforced; and the main business of life as being rule-following and avoidance of rule-breaking - and the servile serving-out of punishments for our inevitable breaches.
*
This constraint motivated by fear of reprisal may be realistic in human society - given the endemic nature of spitefulness, and the 'dog in the manger' attitude of so many people who delight in the misery of others and whose main concern is that nobody else should have more or be more than themselves.
(This is, indeed, the case for such high-flown garb as 'equality', egalitarianism, sexual liberation, democracy and so on.)
*
But there is more to it than this. The constraint is also (and perhaps primarily) inner - it is present even in the privacy of my mind, of my stream of conscious thought.
This is not surprising since belief in gods, spirits, ghosts, malicious ancestors at large - belief in 'the supernatural' in general - is spontaneous and natural to humans - we believe that our inner thoughts are to some extent accessible and shared and communicated, and that among those who share them are powerful and malicious entities (something like the Christian concept of demons).
This is a powerful constraint - and I suspect it is a very general factor in human affairs (although I can only observe it indirectly in other people - I and sure it is there). However, although general, spontaneous, natural - I suspect it is anti-Christian in a developed sense of Christianity - for the simple reason that it implies God (who knows our thoughts) is not fully loving, but is prone to the same kind of resentment and revenge as other people - indeed the worst kind of people - in this world.
Yet at the same time (because it is general, natural, spontaneous to humans) this tendency to assume that God really does have a resentful and vengeful attitude is a constant tendency to which individuals and organizations and society tend to recur (for motivations which may be 'good' - e.g. encouraging or enforcing good behaviour - as well as wicked).
*
This can be seen even among our own young children, who sometimes act towards us in a way that shows they are afraid that we do not really love them, that we need propitiating.
Sometimes the children are right - because parents are not perfect; but they are fundamentally wrong in that loving parents really are not motivated by resentment and really do not need to be propitiated - indeed a loving parent is appalled and deeply sorrowful to perceive this attitude in his children - an attitude based on fear.
*
So, the situation seems to be that it is (at least to some significant extent) natural for humans to treat God as if he were a demon; and demons (I think) really do want to be treated with superstitious concern, propitiated and sacrificed-to.
Demons (presumably) want us never to be free of the constraining fear to express (or even to feel) an attitude that is positive care-free, hope-full. They want humans to cringe, to be eaten up with anxiety about deflecting bad luck, evil influences, they want us to be hog-ridden by superstitious observations, they want us to be always and repeatedly destroying good things as 'sacrifices' - and to regard this destruction of good things as necessary to deflect divine 'wrath'.
*
Unsurprisingly, because humans are error prone and yield to sin, this attitude of constraining fear has been (to varying extents, but sometimes very fully) incorporated into Christianity - the attitude that God watching out for us to trip up, get angry, punish us - unless this is deflected by propitiation and sacrifice - by a general human attitude of pessimism, expressions of misery... an attitude which is in fact and to some significant extent a dishonestly negative expression of our state of mind.
People come to fear - even inside their heads - a full and honest expression of positive and happy states of mind; asif this would trigger the jealous resentment of God! This I feel in myself, and I believe I perceive it in people all around me.
But I believe it is anti-Christian - a flaw, an error, a sin - a consequence of insufficient Christian faith and not a sign of Christian faith: this anxious, superstitious focus on propitiation and sacrifice is itself an insult to God rather than respect for God; deeply saddening to God, rather than what he wants from us.
*
Indeed, when we treat God as if He were a demon, it is analogous to someone who falsely accuses her loving parents of 'abusing' her. It is to treat our loving Father in Heaven as if He were an abuser.
That is a measure of how serious an error we are making; how serious a sin it is to feel constrained against expressing - even to ourselves - our happiness, hope, confidence.
*
Note: On this view, Christ as a propitiation and sacrifice is a matter of getting all that stuff out-of-the-way; of telling us not to worry about it any more because Christ has utterly and permanently taken care of it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)